Stress Management Therapy concepts and Benefits

Popular examples of stress management include meditation, yoga, and exercise. We’ll explore these in detail, with a range of different approaches to ensure that there’s something that works for everyone.

First, let’s set one thing straight: we’re not aiming towards being stress-free all of the time. That’s unrealistic. After all, it’s an unavoidable human response that we all experience from time to time and it’s not all bad either.

However, we can all benefit from identifying our stress and managing it better. Before we dive any deeper into managing stress.

The stress response pattern looks like this:

• Life Situation: caught in traffic jam; late for work
• Perceived as Stress: I’m incompetent; boss will be angry; lose promotion
• Emotional Arousal: irritable, paranoid; poor concentration; overly sensitive
• Physiological Arousal: elevated heart rate and breathing; sweating
• Consequences: loss of tranquility, poor performance; stinky

There are many healthy ways to relieve stress. Multiple methods can also be used together! This can help people relieve stress that affects them at different levels, like physically and emotionally. 

When deciding how to manage stress, it is important to make sure your method is healthy and will work long-term. For example, eating comfort food may help someone feel better in the short term. But if eating comfort food becomes a primary method for dealing with stress, their health can be affected. This may result in another potential stressor, poor physical health. 

Talking to a therapist about stress can also be a key part of addressing and reducing it in the long-term. After getting to know you, a therapist may recommend healthy strategies for dealing with stress. They might personalize these to best suit your needs.

Over 75% of people in the United States report having physical symptoms of stress, according to a 2014 study. These symptoms included tiredness, tension, headaches, and upset stomach. On top of this, 43% said they eat unhealthy food or eat too much when stressed. Both of these habits can lead to serious health problems. A therapist or counselor can help you learn to manage stress in ways that improve, not reduce, your health and longevity. 

Counseling for Stress Management

When stress leads to drug abuse, chronic illness or pain, lack of pleasure or relaxation, or otherwise negatively affects well-being, meeting with a mental health professional or medical doctor can help. Health care professionals can work with you to treat your stress symptoms and work through the issues causing it.

Therapy can help address stress that occurs as a result of life events. When a person is stressed due to loss, divorce, or a life-altering medical diagnosis, therapy can help address these concerns and other effects they can have on a person’s life. When workplace issues lead to stress, for example, a therapist may help a person explore ways to deal with those issues. If an individual is stressed because of a family or relationship issue, couples or family therapy may help them resolve the issue. This can reduce stress for everyone involved.

Types of Therapy to Relieve Stress

Therapists and counselors use many types of treatment to help people cope with stress in healthy ways. For example, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is often an effective form of therapy for stress. CBT can help change negative thought patterns that develop because of stress. It is often used to help people find new ways of thinking about events that cause stress. These new ways of thinking can help reduce the impact of the stressor.

Other types of therapy that can help with stress are often mindfulness-based. This means they promote mindfulness as a method for reducing stress. Many types of therapy incorporate mindfulness. A few of these include mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). 

Stress can also come from other mental health conditions like anxiety, PTSD, or addictions. These conditions are also treatable with therapy. A therapist can help you understand your overall mental health. Based on what they find, they can recommend the best treatment plan for your situation. 

Treatment Options for Stress Therapy

Psychotherapy: This type of therapy takes place with a psychologist, psychiatrist, or another type of mental health professional. In psychotherapy, people are encouraged to discover the underlying causes of their stress so that they can learn strategies for improving their quality of life.

Behavior Therapy: There are several types of behavioral therapy. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is one of the most beneficial ways to deal with stress. In CBT, people are taught to recognize and change negative thought patterns and apply different tools to help them improve their negative-self talk to be more positive. For relieving stress, this means people can learn to be less hard on themselves and to recognize that it’s ok to reduce some of their burdens without seeing themselves as a failure.

Alternative Therapies: In addition to traditional methods of stress therapy, there are many activities that an individual can do to alleviate their stress. Activities like exercise, yoga, acupuncture, massage, meditation, and social support are all useful tools to try if a person is faced with intense feelings of stress or pressure.

Common and Popular Stress Management Tools

Meditation

Meditation consists of attempting to focus attention on one thing a word, an image, simply counting slowly, or focusing solely on the flow of breath in and out of the body to the exclusion of all other thoughts. By focusing on only one thing, it’s much more difficult to worry, be afraid, hateful, or angry. This type of focus is also helpful in choosing what thoughts to focus on, as well as insight into persistent patterns of thinking.

Yoga

Yoga can be done from a chair and not only involves the same level of concentration and focus as meditation, but also improves flexibility a plus for people with SCI.

Visualization and guided imagery

This uses the power of the mind to achieve overall physical relaxation, often by visualizing very detailed peaceful and relaxing scenes. Several studies have documented increased athletic performance with the regular use of visualization. Actors regularly visualize themselves performing before they ever take the stage. More importantly, visualization has been practiced, studied and used with success in people with cancer, chronic pain, and those with headaches, muscle spasms and general or specific anxieties.

Progressive relaxation

This is the process of methodically tensing and relaxing specific muscle groups throughout the body, beginning with the head and working down, or with the feet and working up. The tensing phase normally lasts five to ten seconds, followed by 20 to 30 seconds of conscious and focused relaxation of the same muscle group.

Controlled breathing

Controlled breathing focuses on the process of breathing the full inhalation, the expansion of the belly and the lungs, exhalation, the contraction of the midsection, and all the various physical sensations and sounds that accompany breathing that we normally ignore. Improper or shallow breathing can lead to higher levels of anxiety, depression, muscle tension, fatigue, and headaches. Deep, controlled breathing increases the amount of oxygen taken into the lungs, as well as the amount of carbon dioxide expelled from them, helping the body and mind to work more efficiently and effectively.

Various controlled breathing methods are often used for one to five minutes, three to five times a day, or as needed to relieve symptoms or stress. Spinal cord injury may affect full and complete breathing capacity, either directly or as a result of poor posture. Practicing deep, controlled breathing may require reclining or lying down for some, but the benefits of managing stress, calming the body and the mind, and increasing oxygen flow are well worth the effort.

Benefits

There are numerous benefits to be had from reducing and managing stress, beginning with an increase in concentration, a decrease in anxiety, and a reduction in pain. Effectively managing stress often leads to improved health. Stress management programs are drug-free. Most importantly, stress management programs put you in charge and give you a sense of control, which leads to enhanced self-esteem, less likelihood of depression, and an overall improvement in quality of life. The primary cost consideration is an investment of your time.